Productivity tip #35: kick-ass headphones

December 10, 2007

The FreshBooks headquarters can be a busy place. At any given moment there are phone calls, product discussions, and programming banter clogging the airwaves. Combine that with our open-concept office, which means no cubicles, walls, or other sound-dampening barriers, and you’ve got (at times) one distracting work environment.

I’ve found that I work best when I’m totally focused on the task at hand. Any little distraction, and that huge chunk of code I was juggling in my head — it’s gone, and my productivity with it.

My solution? A pair of studio headphones from Audio-Technica I picked up on eBay back in August. Now when I need to get something done, I pop on my phones and blot out the world with tunes from my iPod. I can’t hear my co-workers and they can’t hear me, even with the volume cranked — which is great, because I listen to some pretty embarrassing stuff.

My self-imposed “audio prison” has become a shining beacon of productivity around the office. Mike’s joked about buying sets for the entire office, and Justin’s test-driving a pair of heavy-duty Sennheiser’s as we speak.

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FreshBooks is the #1 accounting software in the cloud designed to make billing painless for small businesses and their teams. Today, over 10 million small businesses use FreshBooks to effortlessly send professional looking invoices, organize expenses and track their billable time.